Work down this list. Each symptom has one or two likely causes, not ten.
It crushes the dough instead of cutting
The blade is too blunt or too thick.
- Check that the cutter was printed with the taper. Our blades taper from 0.8 mm to 0.4 mm over the top 2 mm. If you printed with a 0.6 mm nozzle the taper cannot be reproduced, and the edge is 0.6 mm flat.
- Check the first layer squash if you printed the cutter upside down. Print it the way the tool orients it, flange on the bed and blade pointing up.
- Cold dough cuts, warm dough smears. Chill the dough for 30 minutes before cutting. This is the single most common fix and it is not a printing problem.
The blade splits down the middle
The slicer printed the wall as two separate lines with a gap, or as one line.
Slice again and look at the preview at half blade height. You want two extrusion lines touching. If not, set the wall count to 2 explicitly and check the wall generator is Arachne rather than Classic. Details for each slicer: Cura, Bambu Studio and OrcaSlicer, PrusaSlicer.
The blade snapped off
Usually PLA, usually dropped, or twisted while cutting.
- Twist the cutter as little as possible. Press straight down and lift straight up.
- If it keeps happening at the same point, that point is a stress riser. Round it off in the design, or increase the blade thickness to 1 mm.
- PETG or PLA+ will bend rather than snap. See PLA or PETG.
The cut edge is rippled or wavy
The blade wobbled while printing.
- Drop the outer wall speed to 25 mm/s.
- Turn on Z hop so the nozzle lifts rather than dragging across the blade.
- If the cutter is small, raise the minimum layer time so each layer has time to set.
The shape is bigger than I set
Two possible causes.
- Elephant foot. The first layer squashed outward. Set elephant foot compensation, remembering that Cura wants a negative number and Bambu Studio and PrusaSlicer want a positive one.
- The base flange. Size in the tool is the size of the cookie, not the outside of the tool. The flange adds its width, 4 mm by default, all the way around. A 75 mm cookie cutter is about 83 mm across the outside. That is intentional so the cookie comes out the size you asked for.
The dough sticks in the cutter
- Dip the cutter in flour between cuts. Tap the excess off.
- Chill the dough.
- If it is a stamp, chill the stamp too. A cold stamp releases much better than a warm one.
- Layer lines on the inside face of a blade give dough something to grip. There is not much to be done about that beyond flouring, and it improves after a few uses.
The imprint detail did not come through
- Check the warning the tool gave you. If it said the thinnest line is under 0.8 mm, the printer physically could not lay that line down, so print bigger or use a heavier design.
- Imprint ribs stop short of the cutting edge by design, so they mark the dough rather than cut through it. If you want them to cut through, set the imprint depth to 0.
- Press harder and more evenly. An imprint needs more force than a cut.
It lifted off the bed mid print
A tall thin wall on a small footprint peels.
- Add a 5 mm brim.
- Clean the bed with dish soap and water, not just isopropyl. Isopropyl moves grease around rather than removing it.
- Check the bed temperature is right for the filament.
Strings between the blade sections
Almost always PETG. See the stringing section in PLA or PETG.